21 Photos Of Spike And Tonya Lewis Lee's Love Over The Years

Another day, another timeless Black love story to tell.

October 2 is a very special day in the lives of iconic film couple Spike and Tonya Lewis Lee. The director and screenwriter met the attorney and future film producer in 1992 at a screening for the trailer of his film Malcolm X.

“So I had a date that night,” he said on the Kelly Corrigan Wonders podcast in May 2024. “So I’m going to the restroom, and I see this woman coming to me—and I know it might sound corny, but it’s true—time stopped. I said, ‘Damn!’”

After the screening, while going down the escalator with his date, he spotted Tonya going in the opposite direction.

“So I’m going down the escalator; I gotta think quick. So tell the person I’m with, ‘I think I left my Montblanc pen upstairs,’ you know, something like that. So I make a U-turn, go back on the escalator and find her and ask her for, you know, her number,” he said.

A year later, on Oct. 2, 1993, the couple wed and eventually welcomed their two children, Satchel and Jackson, who also work in the film industry.

“My beautiful wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, deserves all the credit for the great, young, talented artists our children have become,” he told BET.com. “My son, Jackson, and my daughter, Satchel, and a lot about the persons they have become comes from just listening to the dialogue that goes on at the dinner table.”

Thirty-one years later, they’re still going strong, still making great films, and are still a beloved Black pair.

“I think marriage has taught me more about myself than anything. What I will and won’t put up with, and what’s important to me,” Tonya told Black Love in 2020 when asked about what has kept their union solid. “I believe in marriage; two individuals need to focus on what is most important to them and having the space to go out into the world and work towards achieving just that. Then be able to go home and be in support of each other. It’s a mutual understanding that each individual has a lot to contribute to the other, the marriage, and the world.”

That mutual understanding has allowed them to be a power couple, and one of our absolute favorites. Flip through for photos of the couple over their 30 years as husband and wife.